


But Where Is Your Heart?

by StellarLibraryLady



Series: Dancing To (And Living By) The Oldies [28]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: "Song From Moulin Rouge" (1952), Concern, Confused Spock, Confusion, Crushes, Developing Relationship, First Kiss, Heart Concerns (Literally), Klingons (Mention), M/M, Moulin Rouge References, Pining Leonard "Bones" McCoy, Secret Crush, Songfic, Star Trek Humor, Wistful, Zine: Spiced Peaches, idioms, song related
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2019-11-18
Packaged: 2021-01-30 02:36:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21420790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StellarLibraryLady/pseuds/StellarLibraryLady
Summary: McCoy has a secret crush on Spock which causes him to act strangely.  When Spock notices and asks Kirk about McCoy's problem, Kirk explains that McCoy has lost his heart.  And that's when literal Spock really gets confused.  And concerned.Appeared in Spiced Peaches LVIII.
Relationships: Leonard "Bones" McCoy/Spock
Series: Dancing To (And Living By) The Oldies [28]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/840585
Comments: 10
Kudos: 67





	But Where Is Your Heart?

When ever we kiss,  
I worry and wonder.  
Your lips may be near,  
but where is your heart?

He didn't remember when he first started thinking about Spock differently. He couldn't have named the day, the hour, or even the minute that Spock had changed for him from a dense-acting, bull-headed Vulcan into something for him that he could only identify as a secret crush.

This is stupid, Leonard McCoy tried to lecture himself while his mouth hung open and gasping while his eyes rolled about wildly in his head. He was searching for air that he believed would never come for him again because his intense emotion wasn't allowing him to breathe. Just stop it, he tried to tell himself. It's just a stupid panic attack. People have them everyday and still live. You will live, too, if you only stop being stupid! Love isn't supposed to be bothering you this way! Or in this area! It's supposed to hit the heart, not the lungs. And a region further south in his anatomy. On second thought, that area did seem to be involved, if faint stirrings down there were any indication.

I'm worse than a teenager suffering from his first scalding infatuation, McCoy decided. But he couldn't help what he was experiencing or how tormented he felt. It was a fact of life now for him to think that boiling hot water had been poured all over his poor, unsuspecting body. Because that's how it felt whenever he thought about that aloof Vulcan.

And scalding it was because his feelings forced him to act strangely to his friends. They sensed the angst boiling in him and wondered why. They felt his agony but had no real solution for him. Some things a guy just has to work out for himself.

Oh, his friends would've tried to have helped with support and suggestions if he'd asked. But he didn't, so they didn't. Otherwise, they had the insight to leave him alone. They put themselves in the same situation and knew that they would not appreciate unsolicited advice. So they kept their distance from him.

And this was about the time that he decided to leave them alone, too. And all of this leaving alone made McCoy's social life go from shaky and questionable to practically zero.

"What's the doctor's problem?" a young nurse asked Chapel in soft tones so McCoy couldn't hear.

"Apparently something a pill can't reach," Chapel muttered. Then she snapped back when she saw the young nurse smirk, "Confine your attention to the matters of this sickbay, Rogers."

"Yes, ma'am," Rogers snapped back. This gave Rogers an opportunity to point out their age difference in her reply, which didn't help the atmosphere of sickbay any because everyone knew how sensitive Chapel was about her age and the fact that she wasn't married.

A definite chill fell over the room.

Great, McCoy thought. Now the nurses are fighting. My presence is really bringing out the worst sides of people.

So he started avoiding people altogether, especially Spock, the cause of his frustration.

And all that this behavior got from Spock was a puzzled look. Occasionally, he tried to engage McCoy in a conversation that would hopefully lead into one of their classic debates. Bickering and baiting each other were things that Spock understood, but not this brooding behavior of McCoy’s. So Spock tried to draw out McCoy, but McCoy wasn't being baited anymore. And that disappointed Spock. Why it disappointed him, he could not say. But disappointed, he was.

It's always like this,  
I worry and wonder.  
You're close to me here,  
but where is your heart?

"I do not understand what is wrong with Dr. McCoy," Spock stated to Kirk one evening while they were alone in Spock's quarters playing three-dimensional chess.

"Greater minds than ours have been puzzled by that question for a long time now, Mr. Spock," Kirk murmured with a sly smirk. He hoped to divert Spock's attention by a light answer, banter even, so that the evening would not get bogged down in personalities. "Nobody has been able to come up with any great way yet to explain Dr. McCoy." 

Spock was clearly disappointed. “I had hoped that you might be able to help, Captain.”

Kirk arched an eyebrow. "I cannot see how we could possibly manage to succeed in the short amount of time we have this evening. Do you?" he asked, hoping that Spock would be so mired down by Kirk's rhetoric that Spock would willing leave the subject alone. Kirk had seen Spock bested by McCoy's use of language, especially idioms. Why couldn't it work for Kirk, too?

Except Spock would not be sidetracked by syntax. "Perhaps I expressed myself poorly, Captain. Maybe I should have asked if you knew what is possibly troubling Dr. McCoy."

"What exactly have you noticed about McCoy?" Kirk knew he had to tread carefully here. Spock might be questioning anything about McCoy from the need for the good doctor to clean up his colorful language to doubling the excessive amount of sweetener that McCoy used in his morning tea.

"He seems sad, almost to the point of being depressed," Spock answered.

"Ah, yes," Kirk said, nodding. "Sad."

"Do you know what has happened to make him sad?"

His concern for his friend was evident. But Kirk did not know how far he should go in sharing something that he only suspicioned about McCoy. But it did not look like Spock was going to give up his quest very easily or anytime soon, not if his intent eyes indicated anything. And Kirk knew that they did.

Kirk sighed to himself. One thing about Spock. He could be persistent. Why couldn't Kirk just snap at Spock the way that McCoy did when Spock's doggedness was being a bother? Because that was the way that McCoy and Spock did things; not the way that Kirk and Spock did them.

Yet it was kind of special about what might be McCoy's problem. It made a person realize that some things are perennial and fresh, no matter how jaded and careworn that living might seem to get. And it made Kirk feel mellow and warm with the sweetness of what was going on with McCoy. After all, Spock was a smart guy. If Kirk hinted at what McCoy's problem might be, Spock might catch on. And he might even be interested. He should at least be flattered. After all, Leonard McCoy would be quite a catch for anyone, even an alien who seemed to be above all that sort of thing.

"Well, I don't know for certain, Mr. Spock. But if I had to hazard a guess, I would say that our good doctor has lost his heart."

Spock was visibly shaken and startled. "Oh, but, Captain! That is terrible!"

"Not really," Kirk assured him. "It is a condition that happens quite frequently."

"And there is no reason for general alarm?"

"Oh, no," Kirk reassured him. "In fact it is quite a normal circumstance among people."

"Among humans?" Spock asked for clarification.

"Among anybody," Kirk said with a sage look.

"Even among Klingons?" Spock wanted to know.

Kirk grinned. "Even among Klingons. There's gotta be some reason to account for so many of them," he muttered to himself, then straightened. "Well, if there's no further questions, shall we get back to our game?"

"Of course, Captain," Spock answered, but could not concentrate on chess because he was trying to reconcile this new information that all species, even Klingons, could get along without their hearts. He had studied medicine but had never come across this fact before. And how could Kirk know about it and not him?

Perhaps Kirk's first clue that Spock had not understood him was the fact that Kirk won all of their chess games so easily. Kirk just decided that anybody could be off his game once in awhile, even Spock.

But that did not mean that Spock forgot his puzzling problem. It just meant that he intended to ask further about it. And who better to ask than the person so afflicted?

It's a sad thing to realize  
that you've a heart that never melts.  
When we kiss, do you close your eyes,  
pretending that I'm someone else?

"Ah, good afternoon, Dr. McCoy," Spock greeted as he came across McCoy in a lonely corridor.

He couldn't even begin to understand McCoy's mumbled reply as the good doctor tried to hurry past him without even returning Spock’s pleasant salutations.

Spock caught McCoy's arm and looked at him sternly. "I said, good afternoon, Doctor," he said in a louder voice in case McCoy was losing his hearing as well as his heart.

"That's one man's opinion," McCoy mumbled. "Now let me by. And stop yelling. I'm not deaf."

Well, that answered that question and soothed that fear. But there were so many other health and emotional issues of McCoy's that needed clarification for Spock. "Doctor, I require some explanation about why you have been so distant to me lately."

"Don't know what you're talking about," McCoy muttered, although he knew that every word was a lie.

But Spock would not be quelled. "You avoid me. And if we do chance to speak for more than a moment, you are distant to me as you are now. Will you explain why you have begun to treat me differently than you have before?"

"It won't do any good," McCoy said with dejection on his face and in his voice. "I just don't have the heart to explain what's going on."

"I realize that, Doctor. And must I say that I commiserate with you. I do not know how you can manage to be walking around, let alone working."

McCoy shrugged. "Well, you know what they say. Life goes on. And to quote the song, 'the world doesn't stop for my broken heart.'"

Spock blinked. "It broke? Your heart actually broke? I sympathize with you."

"That's ironic, seeing as how you caused it."

"I?! How could I do that? I have been nowhere near you lately."

McCoy gave him his best wistful, melancholy smile. "Yeah. I know."

"That is a strange answer."

"Well, it's the only one you are going to get." McCoy was tired of the conversation. He wanted a return to numbness. If he couldn't have Spock, he didn't want to be around him anymore. "Now, let me pass."

McCoy started around him, but Spock grabbed him into his arms.

"What the hell do you think you are doing?!" McCoy protested as he automatically struggled the rough embrace.

Spock stopped the grappling, but did not release him. "Well, that is more emotion and response than I have seen out of you in weeks. I thought that is what you were always trying to get out of me. Why are you suddenly acting as if you are me?"

"This conversation is silly!" McCoy declared.

"Well, we certainly agree on that much."

"Then let me loose."

"You have not answered my question."

"And I'm not about to. It wouldn't do either one of us any good if I was to drag all of this out into the open."

"So it is somewhere deeply hidden away from sight."

"That's true." McCoy knew that Spock was bogged down with the idiom, but he didn't want to get bogged down also by trying to explain what he really meant. "Now stop being stubborn and let me pass." He struggled but Spock's arms tightened around him. "What the hell?!" McCoy questioned as his eyes went up to Spock's determined face. "What do you think that you're doing?!"

As if to answer him, Spock slammed him against his body and kissed him soundly on the lips.

"What the hell?!" McCoy gasped as he broke the kiss and pulled back for air.

And Spock pulled him back for another kiss. But this one was deeper and lasted longer, and McCoy found that he wasn't in any hurry to break it for air or explanations or anything else. In fact, he molded himself to Spock's body and discovered that they fit very well together. He hoped that Spock was noting the same thing.

When Spock finally released McCoy enough so that there was some space between them, McCoy stood there trembling. Spock still held him, though it was more so McCoy wouldn't collapse and not for his running away which Spock had feared initially. 

Spock didn't know it, but McCoy had no intention of leaving. Not unless he learned that Spock was being frivolous. And McCoy had never known Spock to be frivolous. If, however, McCoy learned that Spock was being frivolous and even mocking, he would turn away and that would be that. And no matter how strong the Vulcan was, McCoy would be through with him. For McCoy's heart was controlled by nothing physical.

McCoy stood there messing with Spock's collar with distraught fingers, not daring to look up into those hard, black eyes. At last he felt confident enough to try to speak. "Ah, what was that, ah, all about, anyway?" He flinched as though he'd swallowed something hard and sharp and unexpected. "The, ah, kissing bit." He shrugged, not knowing, or perhaps not daring, to say more.

"Captain Kirk said that you were having a problem with your heart."

"He did?" Then McCoy forgot that he didn't want to look up and looked up into Spock's eyes. Yep, hard and black. And noncommittal. Just as McCoy thought that they would be. But there was something else there that McCoy couldn't quite define. Could that be... concern? From Spock?!

"What did he have to say about my heart?" McCoy wanted to know.

"That is most strange what he told me. He said that you had lost it, but I feel it beating quite strongly under my hand now."

That wily old fox, McCoy thought. Kirk hadn't been fooled at all!

But Spock was continuing. "Can you tell me how that can be, Doctor? How can I feel your lost heart beating?"

"Why, simple, Mr. Spock," McCoy answered, feeling and looking as wily as Kirk must have. "You found it and gave it back to me."

Spock looked confused. "But how did I do that?"

"Why did you kiss me?" And there was no mocking or belligerence from McCoy.

"It was all I could think to do to stop you from leaving."

"Why?" McCoy asked softly, trying very hard not to be threatening in any way.

"I did not wish to lose you. I wanted you with me."

"And that's just exactly how you gave me back my heart. With your kiss." His eyes flicked over Spock's face. "It was a selfless act and told me how much you cared."

"Of course, I care, Doctor. The dialogue we have had down through the years--"

"You don't have to say it, Spock." A grin tickled the edges of his lips as his eyes glowed into Spock's. Then he added, "Why don't you show me instead?"

"By showing me, do you mean--"

"By kissing me again, you idiot," McCoy murmured, staring at Spock's mouth. "Help me keep track of my heart. I have a helluva time keeping ahold of that little devil. So I'm gonna need a whole lot of help from you to do just that. It skitters away from me on the slightest provocation."

Spock didn't quite understand all of what McCoy was saying, but he could interpret McCoy's rise in heartbeat, wanton gazing, and grasping hands as an increase in sexual interest. A tiny smile curved along Spock's lips as he understood quite correctly just what McCoy's problem was. "I believe that I will be able to help you with your concerns, Doctor--"

Spock never got to finish his sentence because McCoy's lips got in the way. But the guys figured out real fast a new way to communicate with each other that required no verbal responses from them outside of a few graphic groans and sighs. They just let their hands and lips and embraces do their talking for them.

It could even be said that they were utilizing a new form of body language.

You must break the spell,  
this cloud that I'm under.  
So please won't you tell, darling,  
where is your heart?

**Author's Note:**

> I own nothing of Star Trek, its characters, and/or its story lines.


End file.
